An icon of power and strength, Alcatraz has become the single most recognizable
symbol of American society. Situated in the San Francisco Bay, one can’t help but
be drawn to the rocky shore, the dark walls, and the lone light tower sanding cold
against a picturesque sunset imagining what it would have been like to be
incarcerated in one of the world’s most infamous prisons.
Discovered in 1775 by the Spanish explorer Juan Miguel de Ayala, La Isla de los
Alcatraces was little more than a rock inhabited by a group of pelicans from which
the island bears its name (Alcatraces meaning pelicans in Spanish). However, in
1847 the US government began to look at it as much more. Strategically placed at
the mouth of the San Francisco Bay it was the perfect site for a military fort. By
1853 a state of the art military fortress was protecting the Western United States
against foreign infiltration. In 1861, with outbreak of the Civil War,......
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